Which Is The Better Story? History Or Theater? It May Be History.

Wow!  What a story!

Dan Barry writing for the NYTimes, "Read All About It! Kids Vex Titans!", reviews "Newsies the Musical" on Broadway.  It's a great read about a story on stage.  And how facts are not drama. Excerpt.

Naturally, “Newsies the Musical” — which begins previews on March 15 at the Nederlander Theater — has taken liberties with the facts of the Newsboy Strike of 1899, as did “Newsies,” the Movie Flop of 1992 on which it is based. Pulitzer was in Maine, not Manhattan, when the newsboys struck. One of his daughters was not a muckraking reporter who fell for a newsie. And while Theodore Roosevelt was the governor of New York at the time, he had no bully-bully role in the episode.

“But facts are not what drama is,” explained the actor and playwright Harvey Fierstein, who wrote the book, based on the Disney film by Bob Tzudiker and Noni White. “I don’t care that Pulitzer was in Maine.” Mr. Fierstein is right, of course. Having won four Tonys in four separate categories, he has more than a passing knowledge of what works in theater. In the case of “Newsies the Musical,” which had a successful run last year at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, N.J., he said that he wanted to plumb the historical event for art, entertainment and essential truths, as when these striving children come to a liberating realization: “That they matter.”

But the truth of it is, I find the story of "what brung it all about" to be far more engaging.  It's real life drama.  Yes, facts can be drama.

As posted by Andrew Giddings on September 5, 2010, "Kid Blink and the Newsboys Strike," here's how the newspaper titans grew circulation and wealth:

"In the late 1800s, the two most powerful men in the newspaper industry were Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst. The USA was the cultural and commercial centre of the world, and it was through newspapers that Americans watched their country flourish.

New York City was the gateway to this New World; a seething, tumultuous melting pot where people of wealth and poverty, of hundreds of different and languages and cultures, having poured in from the docks, were crammed into the town.

Pulitzer and Hearst simplified the language in their papers and added more pictures, so that they could be read by the foreigners and the uneducated. Tactics such as these saw their sales rise to unprecedented numbers; Pulitzer’s New York World reaching seeing circulation figures of around 360,000. Most of these papers were distributed by ‘newsies’."

Who were the "newsies"? Ragamuffin, homeless, starving kids who bought a bundle of 100 newspapers for 50 cents to resell on the streets for a meager profit. What the kids did not sell worked against them - the titans would not buy back the unsold copies.

The Spanish-American War of 1898 increased the need for news.  And then as today, demand increased prices.  A bundle of papers cost the newsies 60 cents a bundle.  Sure, they probably made a slightly better profit measured in pennies.  But here's the rub: after the war the other papers returned to their pre-war prices.  Not Pulitzer and Hearst.  

"Their greed sparked a week-long strike that destroyed their profits and brought New York City to a standstill.

The Newsboys Strike of 1899  was headed by Kid Blink, an eyepatch-sporting boy in his early teens. “I’m trying to figure how ten cents on a hundred papers can mean more to a millionaire than it does to newsboys, an’ I can’t see it,” he said, “If they can’t spare it, how can we?”

Click here to listen to a podcast about the newsboys strike of 1899.

I love the theater!  But I gotta tell ya: The Newsboys Strike makes one riveting story.

TIPS:

1. When you are faced with a question about how to tell a story in a way that will grab the reader or listener by her lapels remember this: your facts take place in a context that carries emotional meaning when underpinned by a value. 
2. For example, a sketch for the newsies story could sound like this: "Newspaper titans' greed makes another dime off the backs of street kids."
3. It's as simple as what I've been teaching, writing and saying for almost two decades: "Storytelling thrives on imagination.  Images touch the heart and become sensations, sensations trigger memories, memories create meaning and meaning leads to listener action." [Diane F. Wyzga]
4. Start here.